Interview by Karen Langley Karen: Rosamund, thank you for agreeing to an interview with Shiny New Books! You have a distinguished career as a translator, and also as the author of…
Introduced by Rosamund Bartlett Translated by Kenneth Lantz / Olga Shartse Reviewed by Karen Langley Notting Hill Editions will probably need no introduction to readers of Shiny New Books. The…
Reviewed by Liz Dexter It’s the book everyone’s been waiting for that fills in the gaps left by Tony Blair’s autobiography and the various books on the financial crisis, the…
Reviewed by Annabel Once upon a time SF was a subculture haunted by small populations of nerds and geeks. Star Wars (1977) changed that, … SF author Adam Roberts says…
Reviewed by Karen Langley Ice has come a long way since its first publication by its champion, Peter Owen, in 1968. My initial encounter with it was in a striking Picador…
Reviewed by Basil Ransome Davies This novel borrows its title from Fritz Lang’s canonical film noir (which is also a teasing, ironic comedy of the repressed returning) and Finn’s first-person narrator, Dr…
Review by Annabel The children of celebrity couples inevitably have a hard time growing up, especially when their parents split. You need only think of the late Carrie Fisher, daughter…
Translated by Sam Taylor Reviewed by Harriet Moroccan born novelist Leïla Slimani is not the first woman to win France’s most prestigious literary prize, the Prix Goncourt, though she’s only…
Reviewed by Terence Jagger This is an engaging book about other books, but it makes no judgements on them, and nor can we express, even internally, our own views on…
Review by Liz Dexter It’s worth noting from the off that this is not a “new” travel book by the popular explorer, but a revisiting of a journey he made…
Translated by Jamie Bulloch Reviewed by Terence Jagger We are not in Japan, but Germany; set in the snowy Black Forest, not far from the French border, this novel starts…
Reviewed by Harriet Most people probably think that the presence of black people in Britain began with the large influx of nearly 500 who came over from Jamaica in 1948…
Horatio Clare, who is quite an accomplished nature and travel writer, having a book on container ships and several on birds to his name, takes a journey to the far…
Reviewed by Julie Barham This is a splendid book for all those who revel in the scary, the heroic and the unusual. Anyone familiar with John Buchan’s best known novel, The…
Reviewed by Kate Macdonald This is the first of the new reprint series from the Dean Street Press to be curated by the Furrowed Middlebrow blog, a truly admirable enterprise. They…
Translated by Katherine Gregor Reviewed by Terence Jagger In early twelfth century Venice set we our scene, although the cod historical touch is maybe just a little unfair, there is…
Translated by Ekin Oklap Review by Rob Spence A new novel by Orhan Pamuk is always an event, and this one doesn’t disappoint. It’s an absorbing story, set in the…
Reviewed by Rebecca Foster Fame Is the Spur (originally published in 1940) is the second out-of-print Howard Spring novel reissued by Head of Zeus’s Apollo imprint, following last year’s release…
Translated by Nora Seligman Favorov Reviewed by Karen Langley If asked to name any of the great Russian writers of the 19th century, most Anglophone readers would probably come up…
Reviewed by Max Dunbar Altered States of America Joan Didion’s recently released notebooks capture the feeling of the American South as it must have been as she drove through it…
Review by Annabel While I can’t claim to read anywhere near the volume of old and newly reprinted novels that some of my Shiny colleagues do – perennially falling for…
Reviewed by Terence Jagger As Carly Simon sang in 1971, ‘These are the good old days’. This is a fascinating book, and one you shouldn’t really read in one go…
Review by Terence Jagger So here I am, in the middle way, having had twenty years –Twenty years largely wasted, the years of l’entre deux guerres T S Eliot, Four…
Reviewed by Harriet Earlier this year I reviewed Martin Edwards’ Story of Classic Crime in 100 Books, and very good it was too. So when I spotted this one, also…
